GAE/Translating
GAE is able to translate every string in a techtree, thus allowing you to make an entire mod multilingual. In addition, it can specify tooltips for each unit (also translatable) which can give a short summary of the unit when their icon is hovered over. Language files There are two types of language files that are used to translate mods. The first is the techtree language file, and is located in techtree_name/lang/ and will be named techtree_name'_'language.lng. For example, in Magitech, it would be named magitech/lang/magitech_en.lng (en is the short code for English, see Language codes below for a full list of the language codes). This file would contain the strings for the resources, faction names, attack type names, and armor type names. The second language file is located in techtree_name/factions/'faction_name'/lang/ and would be named faction_name'_'language.lng. For example, in the Magic faction, it would be named magitech//factions/magic/lang/magic_en.lng. This file contains all of the faction's translations, including unit names, upgrade names, unit and upgrade tooltips, command names, and level names. Both of these will be explained in detail later on this page (see Techtree language file and Faction language file). Language codes As follows is the list of language codes for different languages (or varients of them) which can be used when translating. A language file would end with the code on the left (the text to the right of the equal sign is the full name). Excerpt from langlist.txt: af=Afrikaans an=Aragonese ar=Arabic as=Assamese ast=Asturian az=Azeri be=Belarusian ber=Amazigh bg=Bulgarian bn=Bengali bo=Tibetan bokmal=Norwegian, Bokmål br=Breton bs=Bosnian byn=byn ca=Catalan crh=Crimean Tatar cs=Czech csb=Kashubian cy=Welsh da=Danish de=German dz=Dzongkha eesti=Estonian el=Greek en=English es=Spanish et=Estonian eu=Basque fa=Persian fi=Finnish fil=Filipino fo=Faroese fr=French fur=Furlan fy=Frisian ga=Irish gd=Scots Gaelic gl=Galician greek=Greek gu=Gujarati gv=Manx Gaelic ha=Hausa he=Hebrew hi=Hindi hne=Chhattisgarhi hr=Croatian hsb=Upper Sorbian ht=U006Breyol hu=Hungarian hy=Armenian id=Indonesian ig=Igbo ik=Inupiaq is=Icelandic it=Italian iu=Inuktitut iw=Hebrew ja=Japanese ka=Georgian kk=Kazakh kl=Greenlandic km=Khmer kn=Kannada ko=Korean ks=Kashmiri ku=Kurdish kw=Cornish ky=Kyrgyz lg=Luganda lo=Lao lt=Lithuanian lv=Latvian mai=Maithili mg=Malagasy mi=Maori mk=Macedonian ml=Malayalam mn=Mongolian mr=Marathi ms=Malay mt=Maltese nan=Minnan nb=Norwegian, BokmÃ¥l ne=Nepali nl=Dutch nn=Norwegian, Nynorsk no=Norwegian, Bokmål nr=Southern Ndebele nso=Northern Sotho oc=Occitan or=Oriya pa=Punjabi pl=Polish pt=Portuguese ro=Romanian ru=Russian rw=Kinyarwanda sa=Sanskrit sc=Sardinian sd=Sindhi se=Northern Saami shs=Secwepemctsin si=Sinhala sk=Slovak sl=Slovenian sq=Albanian sr=Serbian ss=Swati st=Sotho ta=Tamil te=Telugu tg=Tajik th=Thai tk=Turkmen tl=Tagalog tn=Tswana tr=Turkish ts=Tsonga tt=Tatar ug=Uyghur ur=Urdu uz=Uzbek ve=Venda vi=Vietnamese wa=Walloon wo=Wolof xh=Xhosa yi=Yiddish yo=Yoruba zh=Chinese zu=Zulu Translating basics In language files, the keyword is on the left of an equal sign, being the constant value that is always the same, and the translated string is on the right of the equal sign, and will appear exactly as show in the game (including case, with a few exceptions where proper sentence case will automatically be done). For example: keyword=Translated string! In this above example, the keyword is "keyword", and in game, you'd just see "Translated string!". A keyword might be "PlayNow", which is the keyword for the button in the custom game and scenario menus which lets you begin the game. In english, the translated string is "Play now!", so in the language file, this looks like: PlayNow=Play now! Comments can be inserted into language files by starting the line with a semicolon (;). Each new line of the file is a new translation string, blank and comment lines ignored. Types of language files Techtree language file The techtree language file contains just a few basic things, the resources, faction names, attack types, and armor types. The key words for all of these are exactly as they appear in the XMLs and folders, so if you have a gold resource (which means you should have a folder and corresponding XML named "gold" in the resource's folder), that would be the keyword. For example, Magitech's language file would have to translate the name of the tech faction, which would look like this in the english language file: tech=Tech Faction language file Factions are where more versatility comes in. Unit names, upgrade names, command names, tooltips, and level names would all appear in this file. Unit names, upgrade names, and level names would all be taken as they appear in the XML, so if you have a unit named "swordman", then that would be a keyword in the language string. Tooltips, however, are added in slightly differently, as explained below. Tooltips Tooltips are "descriptions" which appear when hovering over a command button. By default, GAE displays information about the command (for example, hovering over an attack command might show the strength of the attack command). The tooltips detailed in this section allow you to add a description to these mouse-overs. Usage Tooltips can be added to any command via its name element, by giving it a tip attribute (eg, ). The engine will look up the name passed into the tip attribute in the faction language file and display that as the tooltip. Some commands can create a submenu (namely build, produce, morph, and upgrade), and each option in the submenu can be given its own tooltip. To do this, the tip attribute is instead placed on tags varying with the command: These commands which use a submenu are also capable of changing the sub-header displayed at the top of a tooltip. For example, by default (when unmodified), on a build command, the subheader would read "Build %s", where "%s" is the name of the building to build. With the sub-header attribute, you can specify a keyword in the language file to use as an alternative to the default. In the language file, "%s" will be replaced with the name of the unit, building, or upgrade appropriate to the command. Examples Single tip In this example, a tooltip is added to an attack command. Thus, "my_attack_tooltip" is now the keyword for the tooltip of this command. In the language file, we can reference that keyword and give it some proper text, eg: my_attack_tooltip=The unit will attack a foe with frenzy fury. Multiple tips For build commands which give multiple building choices, you can specify different tooltips for each building by giving the building tags a tooltip, such as in the example below: Multiple tips with sub-headers For the two click system for buildings, you can also specify a subheader, which will be the header at the top of the tooltip, by default the command name, but the "%s" value will be replaced with the building's name, so you could, for example, use a subheader of "Build %s" so that the tooltip header for building1 would say "Build Building1", not just "Build". This is done as seen below: And the language file would get: build_subheader=Build %s As an outcome, you would have the header "Build Building1" for the first building. Further examples GAE's Shibboleth techtree which defaultly comes with testing versions and can be downloaded from the Git repository, contains many examples for language strings and provides many real examples. Shibboleth can be obtained by downloading the source code. See also *GAE *List of GAE's Features Category:GAE Category:Detailed feature pages